One of the most lucrative ways to make passive income is affiliate marketing. Essentially, it allows companies to advertise their products through an affiliate partner in exchange for a commission. Compared to traditional marketing, this significantly increases audience reach for less cost and risk.
With that said, creating a successful affiliate marketing program requires strategy, and using affiliate marketing software is a fundamental one. Here are some of the best affiliate marketing platforms to help you jumpstart, oversee, and expand your affiliate marketing initiatives.
Leading Affiliate Marketing Software Platforms for 2024:
1. Refersion
Refersion is a well-known figure in the affiliate marketing world, helping affiliates, influencers, and ambassadors boost eCommerce revenue. Their software makes it easy for you to run affiliate marketing programs for Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) channels through data attribution, performance insights, and relationship building. To date, Refersion has generated over $2 billion in affiliate revenue and processed more than $366 million in affiliate commissions.
Refersion affiliate commissions
Refersion is partnered with major eCommerce platforms like Shopify, Shopify Plus, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. It also lets you connect with over 2,000 apps and tools powered by Zapier, such as Affluent, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, PayPal, Omnisend, AdRoll, and Google Analytics.
Starting as a beta product, Refersion has grown into a successful company. Recently, it was acquired by Pantastic, an eCommerce company that helps independent brands succeed through their resources and tools.
Scott Rafer—CEO and co-founder of Pantastic—stated that this acquisition strengthens their ability to support independent brands in the evolving eCommerce world. With Refersion’s affiliate features integrated, merchants can expand their businesses and thrive in the long run.
Source: prnewswire.com
With the acquisition, Refersion lets brands reach new customers and enter new markets. Affiliates also get the opportunity to connect more with their followers and earn money through their platforms. Affiliates can directly apply with brands they think are the right for them or sign up for Refersion Marketplace to check new options and access performance dashboards.
Refersion has worked with over 60,000 eCommerce brands and has consistently produced successful campaigns. The company recently worked with DryEye Rescue, an eCommerce platform that provides diverse solutions for people suffering from dry eye syndrome.
With the help of Sobefy, an eCommerce platform and development agency, DryEye Rescue launched an affiliate program to incentivize medical professionals to recommend their online store to patients. Sobefy’s managing director, Oscar Diaz, chose Refesion as DryEye Resucue’s affiliate marketing management platform.
Diaz chose Refersion due to its tracking methods, integrations, pricing, and commitment to cultivating a lasting partnership. The brand benefitted from Refersion’s API and tech stack customization for easy-track conversions on their websites and mobile app stores.
With this partnership, DryEye Rescue has achieved 85% affiliate network growth and 117% affiliate-driven revenue increase in a year. Over the past three years of partnership, the brand noted a 750% increase in monthly revenue from affiliates.
DryEye Rescue case study
DryEye Rescue and many brands trust Refersion for its top-notch services, including attribution and first-party tracking. Refersion doesn’t rely on traditional cookies, which enables the platform to ensure the long-term security and safety of user data.
It also provides campaign and management services to help brands manage unlimited affiliates, campaigns, clicks, and partnerships, as well as advanced offers and commissions like tiered structures, flat-fee bonuses, and rewards for enterprise plants. Brands can also customize commission rates based on products, subscriptions, and customer acquisition. Furthermore, Refersion provides data insights and privacy via a unique dashboard with robust reporting.
Among Refersion’s premier services is its seamless payment processes. Merchants can automatically send monthly payments to their affiliates based on approved conversions. Refersion integrates with top payment platforms, including PayPal, Zelle, and Venmo. Just recently, Refersion launched Unified Payments, which automates consolidated payments to streamline the payment process for merchants and affiliate partners. Unified Payments also generates certain US tax forms for qualified clients. This new feature enables SMBs to scale effectively while helping large enterprises focus on strengthening partnerships.
Source: ktla.com
Key Features:
- Unlimited affiliates
- Reliable and accurate first-party tracking
- Partnership flexibility; work with any type of affiliate – publisher, ambassador, influencer, etc.
- Commission, payment, and tax automation
- Dashboard customization
- Real-time and easy-to-read reports
- Multiple payment options
Pricing: After a free 14-day trial, pricing starts at $119 per month (or $99 per month if paid yearly).
2. Upfluence
Best for: eCommerce brands of all sizes
Notable clients: Universal, AliExpress, Mercedes-Benz, Verizon, Marriott
Location: Headquartered in New York City, USA
Year founded: 2013
Upfluence is more than just an influencer marketing platform. It’s also an affiliate management software with the ideal tools for managing brands’ affiliate programs, from sourcing influencers to assessing their content’s impact. Upfluence provides premier features, including performance tracking, affiliate registration management, commission payments automation, and detailed reporting. It also helps manage partnerships and communication with affiliates.
Upfluence reviews
Upfluence helps you recruit influencer affiliates to increase your sales and not your workload. You can easily search through the software’s influencer profile database and invite them to your affiliate program. The database stores pertinent information about creators and affiliates across all social networks.
Each affiliate is vetted based on their performance, audience, and content. You can easily check their engagement rates, audience size, demographics, and more information based on Upfluence’s data-rich profiles. Using influencer search, you can look for affiliates who already know and love your brand. You can also find influencers and affiliates by city or niche.
Influencers by niche
Upfluencer also provides free tools to help you monitor influencer affiliates. You can accurately attribute sales via a unique affiliate link to track orders and calculate commissions. Through its Stream tool, you can also track the overall campaign performance and calculate the program’s ROI. The Stream tool also provides search tools for Instagram, Twitch, YouTube, TikTok, X (Twitter), and Pinterest.
The platform can seamlessly connect with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento. With these integrations, Upfluence enables brands to run and manage high-converting affiliate campaigns that sell. The custom coupon codes linked to eCommerce stores let marketers track and attribute sales in real time.
Upfluence integration with Magento Adobe commerce
Upfluence recently announced a groundbreaking integration with Amazon. The new Amazon Attribution Integration lets Amazon vendors integrate directly with their Amazon storefronts. This facilitates effortless affiliate link creation, real-time campaign performance tracking, and direct compensation of affiliates.
Upfluence’s team of 100+ workers successfully served 1600+ clients worldwide. Recently, Branded, a service provider that builds, acquires, and scales eCommerce products into omnichannel and social brands, teamed up with Upfluence to turn online businesses into global brands using Amazon and DTC techniques. Upfluence Amazon Attribution integration helped mitigate performance-based affiliate costs, which was Branded’s top obstacle.
The strategy was to team up with popular influencers to promote Branded’s products. This helped Branded do better in marketing and get seen by more people, especially through online ads. Branded keeps track of sales and rewards influencers who really help sell their products using Amazon Attribution. With the new Upfluence Amazon Attribution Integration, Branded could use Amazon’s 10% Brand Referral Bonus (BRB) to save money on marketing. This bonus helps cut down on expenses and makes influencer marketing more successful.
For example, when YouTuber Shea Whitney promoted the Fullstar Veggie Chopper, the campaign made over 10 times the money spent. After giving Shea Whitney a 20% cut of the sales, the 10% BRB covered the rest of Branded’s marketing costs. This shows how Branded used influencer marketing along with the Upfluence Amazon Attribution integration to get big results without spending much.
Upfluence review
Key Features:
- Affiliate recruitment
- A branded landing page for sign-ups
- Affiliate link tracking and commission calculation
- Automated payments with international support
- Outreach email templates
- Promo code generation
- A content dashboard
- Detailed analytics
- A social listening tool
Pricing: Access to Upfluence is provided on a subscription model, with different service modules starting at a monthly charge of $478.
Key Features: Influencer Search & Discovery, Relationship Management, Campaign Management, Third Party Analytics, Automated Recruiting, Influencer Lifecycle Management, Team Collaboration Tools, Content Review, Campaign Reporting, Audience Analysis, E-commerce Tools, Product/Gifting Tools, Payment Processing, Social Listening, Affiliate Management, Affiliate Campaigns,
Channels: Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Twitch, Tiktok, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs
3. Levanta
Best for: Amazon Sellers (not vendors) of any size
Notable clients: Forum Brands, Acceleramota, Acquco, Martech Record, Ella Bella
Location: Seattle, Washington
Year founded: 2022
Levanta is a platform where Amazon sellers and content creators converge. It helps businesses grow by teaming up with publishers, affiliates, and influencers to bring more people to their online stores. With this method, sellers can get good store visitors, partner with popular creators, and handle marketing costs well by only paying when someone buys something, not just for clicks.
For sellers, Levanta is a one-stop software for teaming up with affiliates, creators, and publishers. Getting started with Levanta is easy—just connect your Amazon account and upload all your ASINs with one click. With Levanta, you can set a cost-per-sale for your Amazon products and earn Amazon’s Brand Referral Bonus to help cover your commission costs. It works seamlessly with the Amazon Attribution API, giving you a complete view of how your affiliate channel is performing. You can use custom reports to track clicks, Add-to-Carts, and conversions.
Levanta also makes paying affiliates simpler. As a seller, you only need to make one monthly affiliate payment, and the software takes care of the rest. You can set up automatic billing or pay manually. Plus, with the Levanta Ledger, you can easily review your affiliate payment breakdown—you pay one monthly invoice, and Levanta distributes the payments to the publishers.
At the core of Levanta’s offerings is its advanced tracking system, which ensures precise monitoring of affiliate-driven sales. This feature is crucial for sellers seeking to optimize their affiliate relationships and for creators aiming to maximize their earnings from Amazon listings. Levanta.io enhances this with a competitive commission structure, including the opportunity for US Amazon sellers to earn an average of a 10% Brand Referral Bonus from Amazon. This means they can earn rewards for sales from outside sources, making more money without relying on regular click-based ads.
For creators, Levanta offers a chance to make more money by teaming up directly with Amazon Sellers. On average, it can help you boost your income by 50%. You can collaborate with brands that give you better commissions and even negotiate for custom rates. You’ll get credit for more sales, with an attribution window extended to 14 days. You can handle your links, build relationships with sellers, check your affiliate earnings, and track how well you’re doing with detailed reports.
The two-year-old startup announced a $1 million funding round late last year. The company has already exceeded $1 million in annual recurring revenue. Its marketplace also has almost 2000 creators and over 500 brands. Even though it is new to the industry, its success stories are piling up.
Case in point: Ella Bella partnered with Levanta to grow their Amazon sales and improve their best seller rank. Ella Bella, an Amazon Seller of top-quality hair care products, started using Levanta’s affiliate marketing platform in May 2023 and has seen huge growth since then.
Paul Nicoll, co-owner of Ella Bella, wanted to find new ways to get more people to their Amazon store and generate more sales. Paul found Levanta really easy to use. He could quickly find affiliates and influencers who wanted to help promote Ella Bella’s products. Plus, Levanta helped Paul keep track of how well the affiliate campaigns were doing and made it simple to pay them.
Ella Bella case study
Levanta connected Ella Bella with beauty influencers, helping them reach more potential customers. This quickly boosted traffic and sales in their Amazon store. The increase in sales from the influencers also helped Ella Bella climb higher in Amazon’s search results, and the extra visitors from the affiliates also helped improve their Best Seller Rank. The results speak for themselves:
Ella Bella results
Key Features:
- Tailored affiliate management for Amazon
- Direct Brand-Creator partnerships
- Performance analytics and reporting
Pricing:
- Standard Plan: $150 per month or $1,440 per year, plus 5% of affiliate sales revenue
- Levanta Gold Plan: $750 per month, plus 3.5% of affiliate sales revenue
- Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing
4. UpPromote
Best for: Small, medium, and large businesses
Notable clients: TréSkin, Mysteek Naturals
Location: Headquartered in Hanoi, Vietnam
Year founded: 2019
UpPromote is an integrated, automatic affiliate and influencer marketing service provider for Shopify retailers. It has helped its user base of 35,000+ brands to simplify affiliate marketing by breaking down the process into key steps. You create your program, find suitable affiliates, and monitor their performance.
UpPromote revenue generated
Acting as a mediator between sellers and affiliates, UpPromote facilitates partnerships to boost sales. It equips both parties with tools and resources to handle affiliate campaigns effortlessly. Sellers can list products, set commissions, and track sales, while affiliates can generate links and monitor performance.
UpPromote also streamlines the affiliate marketing process by automating tasks like link generation and commission tracking. Its real-time analytics help users understand campaign performance and refine strategies. Plus, it ensures transparency and security by accurately attributing sales to affiliates.
UpPromote all-in-one affiliate solution
UpPromote has diverse integration options to meet different needs. You can integrate email marketing services like Klaviyo, Mailchimp, and Omnisend, while subscription services are covered with integrations like Recharge and Bold Subscription. UpPromote also has an API for custom integrations. Moreover, UpPromote has recommended app partners and theme partners based on testing and experimentation.
For instance, UpPromote and StorePify have joined forces to enhance eCommerce experiences. StorePify is a theme created by ThimPress especially for Shopify users. With StorePify, businesses get access to a range of pre-designed layouts and pages. It’s designed to make shopping online easier and more enjoyable for customers, which can lead to them coming back for more. With StorePify’s easy-to-use design and UpPromote’s helpful features for suggesting additional products, businesses can grow their online sales.
Upromote also recently teamed up with Lebesgue.io, a platform that gathers important marketing data and live benchmarks for online businesses. This partnership is all about helping businesses grow their customer base, raise brand awareness, and achieve great returns on investment with UpPromote, all while minimizing risks.
UpPromote ensures that your website speed remains unaffected and can manage the demands of your busy eCommerce business with a dedicated server. Additionally, you receive top-notch support and a completely transparent process. UpPromote’s team of live agents is available 24/7 to assist and prioritize your requests.
Clients have continuously praised UpPromote’s remarkable work. Brands across all industries have used the affiliate marketing platform for various goals. Salesdress, a global fashion retailer, worked with UpPromote to find the best funnels to reach potential customers and provide them with exceptional products and services.
UpPromote played a key role in helping Salesdress achieve over $1 million in affiliate marketing sales. Currently, Salesdress boasts 5 thousand affiliates. Jon Cook, the Chief Marketing Officer of Salesdress, highlighted that although they utilize other platforms to boost sales, the majority of their sales come from UpPromote. With UpPromote, the company no longer needs to track sales results manually. The Auto-tier commission system provides significant motivation to strive for higher levels, consequently enhancing product marketing efforts.
UpPromote review
UpPromote has an impressive 4.9-star rating in the Shopify App Store.
Key Features:
- Customizable registration forms, email templates, and affiliate links
- Analytics and reports
- Integration with PayPal for automatic payments
- Custom commissions
Pricing: UpPromote’s paid plans start at $29.99 per month (or $24.99 when billed yearly). A free plan is also available.
5. Tracknow
Best for: Brands and agencies, large and small
Notable clients: WeSell, Cashdo, SIMple, DNA Markets, Wifly
Location: Ashkelon, Ilinois
Year Founded: 2022
Tracknow is an advanced affiliate software that offers solutions for various aspects of affiliate marketing, including building your affiliate program, tracking software, assessing influencer performance, IB software, and iGaming. With Tracknow, you gain complete control over your advertising efforts, enabling expansion into new areas.
Their Partner Affiliate Network service stands out as an innovative performance marketing solution. It’s designed specifically to strengthen partner and ad networks and incorporates various compensation models, such as cost-per-sale, cost-per-click, cost-per-mille, and lifetime payments, catering to a wide range of advertising strategies.
Track Now
Tracknow’s popularity stems from its flexibility and depth of customization options. These allow for a tailored approach to affiliate marketing and enable businesses to expand their advertising efforts significantly. It specializes in affiliate tracking software, making it easy to manage a complex affiliate network or kickstart a program. With its swift and advanced platform, it also tracks influencer performance, giving you a comprehensive view through its dashboard.
Additionally, Tracknow offers customization options such as adding your brand logo, changing theme colors, and providing free SSL setup for your domain. You can also personalize your emails and use dedicated SMTP. Plus, you can upload unlimited banners, text links, and creatives to keep your content fresh.
Tracknow’s affiliate tracking platform features offline coupon tracking, a unique way to track and reward affiliates. Its multi-level marketing (MLM) tool enhances your network by recruiting new affiliates and earning from their sales. Tracknow allows you to customize commissions by product, category, or affiliate, paying top affiliates and setting custom rates. It also includes advanced anti-fraud features to prevent affiliate fraud and safeguard your earnings.
Tekpon listed Tracknow’s comprehensive features:
On the integration front, Tracknow can fully integrate with the most widely used eCommerce platforms, including Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, and Postback, as well as PayPal, Stripe, WordPress, and Google Tag Manager.
Tracknow’s affiliate performance product is intertwined with its social performance product, which keeps a close eye on social media engagements on TikTok and Instagram. The Tracknow social affiliate product is equipped with specialized tools for analyzing social media traffic and overseeing influencer performance on social platforms. Moreover, Tracknow offers analytics features and the ability to incentivize affiliates based on various metrics, including sales, likes, shares, comments, and overall social media performance.
Through thorough auditing and the creation of personalized benchmarks by integrating campaign reports, Tracknow allows you to compare your performance with broader market data, providing a comprehensive understanding of influencer and partner impact. Additionally, Tracknow offers finance performance tools and iGaming performance tools.
The finance performance tool is for brokers. This financial affiliate software provides management and marketing solutions specifically designed for the forex and trading industry. It’s crafted for IBs, affiliate program operators, and marketing teams, featuring customizable tools for efficient affiliate management, including CPA, pip share, and lots share group payout models.
On the other hand, the iGaming tool is designed for casino and iGaming affiliate software solutions. Tracknow’s real-time tracking dashboard offers a clear overview of affiliate metrics such as player sign-ups, deposits, and activity, allowing you to monitor promotions and comprehend affiliate performance effortlessly.
Key Features:
- Dashboard for affiliate and influencer performance monitoring
- Customizable branding options, including domain personalization and email templates
- Unlimited creatives for up-to-date content
- Advanced commission rules and fraud detection to optimize earnings and protect against fraud
- Comprehensive tracking for affiliate programs, sales, and commissions
- White-label options for a branded affiliate marketing experience
Pricing: Three plans are available: Small Business, Enterprise, and Network. The starting price is $79, billed monthly.
6. Trackdesk
Best for: Small eCommerce businesses, SaaS providers, subscription services
Notable clients: Nicereply, Converting Ads
Location: Prague, Czech Republic
Year founded: 2022
Trackdesk is an innovative platform that transforms your affiliate marketing approach. It offers advanced workflow, state-of-the-art automation, and steadfast support to generate valuable insights that fuel growth.
Let’s take its automation capabilities as an example. Its automated solutions enable the creation, monitoring, and improvement of campaigns that boost conversions and ROI. You can also automate recruitment, provide flexible commission structures, and streamline affiliate management.
Another standout feature is its integrations. It integrates with many platforms, such as Mailchimp, Shopify, PayPal, Stripe, and Wix, ensuring a smooth and harmonious fusion with your current marketing infrastructure.
Trackdesk also offers a Partnership Managers Marketplace where you can connect with curated partnership managers who can help you set up, manage, and scale your affiliate program.
Key Features:
- Integration with popular platforms
- Automation
- Customizable commission groups
- Unlimited affiliates
- Responsive customer support
- Fraud protection
- Real-time reporting
Pricing: Trackdesk offers a free plan for up to $5,000 revenue per month. For businesses that generate more than $5,000 per month, pricing starts at $67 per month. Custom pricing is also available for enterprise clients.
7. Rewardful
Best for: Small SaaS businesses
Notable clients: Podia, MemberSpace, PickaSite
Location: Headquartered in Edmonton, Canada
Year founded: 2017
Rewardful is a highly efficient and user-friendly affiliate marketing software platform tailored specifically for SaaS businesses. By seamlessly integrating with Stripe and Paddle, it offers an incredibly simple and convenient way to set up affiliate and referral programs for your business.
Trusted by over 20,000 SaaS companies, Rewardful handles referrals, discounts, and commissions, all while eliminating guesswork. Focusing on simplicity, deep integration, and a clean, minimalist user interface, it aims to unlock your business’s untapped growth potential through its comprehensive referral and affiliate program management features.
The simplicity of Rewardful’s setup process truly sets it apart. The platform allows you to launch your affiliate program in under 15 minutes, thanks to its easy-to-follow instructions and minimal coding requirements. Designed with subscriptions and Stripe in mind, Rewardful caters specifically to all SaaS and subscription scenarios, including free trials, upgrades, downgrades, cancellations, pro-rated changes, and refunds.
Moreover, this white label affiliate marketing software enables the creation of on-brand, customizable affiliate programs that can be public, private, or invite-only. The platform also offers in-app customer referral programs, allowing you to manage all referral and affiliate program types from a single location. This streamlines your marketing efforts and optimizes efficiency. Additionally, Rewardful allows you to unlock various revenue channels by managing different programs from one account, saving you time and effort.
Key Features:
- Simple setup process
- Integrations with other tools
- Subscription-focused features
- Customizable affiliate programs
- Refer a friend program
- Streamlined management tools
Pricing: Rewardful offers an array of subscription options to fit various needs and budgets. After a free 14-day trial, pricing starts at $49 per month.
8. Post Affiliate Pro
Best for: Medium to large businesses
Notable clients: Instabank, ProtonVPN
Location: Headquartered in Bratislava, Slovakia
Year founded: 2001
As one of the most reviewed affiliate marketing software, Post Affiliate Pro has a presence in over 100 countries. The company has 100 million affiliates and paid commissions amounting to $500 million. It has also won several awards in referral software, customer satisfaction, and affiliate management software.
Post Affiliate Pro integrates with over 200 content management systems and payment processors, making it easier to customize for your brand. The platform’s branding feature allows you to create different banners for your promos and get free lifetime updates. If you should get stuck, though, the software has a five-star customer support team available around the clock on various communication platforms.
Post Affiliate Pro is a top-rated software in affiliate marketing, referral tracking, and affiliate management.
Key Features:
- Customizable interface
- Tracking tools
- Fraud protection
- Mass payments
- Real-time data reporting
- 24/7/365 customer support
Pricing: After a generous 30-day free trial, pricing starts at $129 per month.
9. Tapfiliate
Best for: Small and medium businesses
Notable clients: Sendinblue, Selz, DEGIRO
Location: Headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Year founded: 2014
Tapfiliate’s 93% customer satisfaction rate speaks for itself. More than 2,000 clients trust this platform, which prioritizes customer happiness. Additionally, Tapfiliate is part of Amitad, a network that connects advertisers and affiliates.
Tapfiliate’s new Affiliate SubID Reporting feature allows affiliates and advertisers to analyze affiliate metadata for better decision-making. SubIDs are unique URL parameters that enhance affiliate link tracking, revealing the source of conversions, be it a YouTube video, an Instagram post, or blog content. This detailed insight empowers you to optimize marketing efforts and boost ROI.
One of the ways that it keeps users happy is by giving them full brand control. You can create personal links and sign-up pages, as well as manage brand materials and promotions within the platform. This can be attractive to affiliates, whom you can even add with an invite URL.
Features like these have helped Enpal, an award-winning startup in the solar sector, onboard 200 affiliates. They’ve praised the freedom to customize the program, which makes it much easier to integrate affiliate marketing into their overall marketing strategy.
Key Features:
- Step-by-step onboarding
- Sales tracking links and coupons
- White-labeled affiliate pages
- Commission flexibility
- Real-time program reporting
- Integrations with more than 30 platforms
- Custom integrations
Pricing: Tapfilliate offers a 14-day free trial. Its tiered pricing starts at $89 a month.
10. LeadDyno
Best for: Small, medium, and large businesses
Notable clients: Snappa, Beddy’s
Location: Headquartered in Edina, Minnesota
Year founded: 2014
A leader in affiliate management, LeadDyno has tracked more than 309 million referrals since it was founded and more than $161 million in affiliate-generated sales in 2022 alone. This affiliate marketing automation software integrates with more than 25 platforms, which you can install in just one click. These include eCommerce, payment processors, CRMs, and marketing platforms.
One of LeadDyno’s most exciting features is the affiliate portal, which you can customize with your logo, color scheme, and welcome message. You can also upload your marketing materials, which affiliates can easily access and share on their platforms. You can even send newsletters and create incentives and trackable coupon codes for your affiliates.
For example, when Cents of Style wanted to empower female entrepreneurs and, at the same time, reshape traditional marketing, they turned to affiliate marketing. They didn’t immediately turn to LeadDyno, though, but once they did, everything started to click and real results rolled in. With the help of LeadDyno, they’ve paid hundreds of thousands in commissions to hundreds of affiliates, helping them to realize their vision of empowering female entrepreneurs. And, their fashion brand also benefited. Their web sales grew by 80% and they’ve generated nearly $2 million in affiliate sales.
LeadDyno was among the 30 apps featured in the celebrated Stripe App Marketplace launch. This recognition reaffirmed its status as a tech pioneer, highlighting the impact and innovation it brings to the affiliate marketing industry.
Key Features:
- Real-time commission tracking
- One-click integrations
- Multiple tracking options
- Marketing and recruitment automation
- Easy set-up commission structure
- Customizable payment scheme
Pricing: LeadDyno’s pricing starts at $49 per month with a free 30-day trial.
11. Grin
Best for: Brands looking to scale their influencer and affiliate marketing efforts
Notable clients: InkBox, Uber, Mari Gold, Ipsy
Location: Sacramento, California
Year founded: 2014
Grin.co distinguishes itself in the affiliate software landscape by offering an all-in-one solution that simplifies affiliate marketing management. This platform is ideal for brands that aspire to cultivate and expand their affiliate relationships efficiently. Grin.co’s software is engineered to generate and track affiliate links, manage discount codes, and create custom, branded affiliate pages—all while seamlessly integrating with your eCommerce shop.
The platform’s integrated campaign workrooms and CRM functionalities for affiliates underscore its commitment to fostering long-lasting affiliate relationships. Grin.co’s ability to manage payments within the platform ensures a smooth operational flow, making it a happy haven for affiliates.
For brands seeking to grow their word-of-mouth marketing efforts, Grin.co’s extensive suite of tools provides the necessary leverage. The platform’s focus on building authentic, brand-boosting relationships is evident in its design, making it a valuable asset for any affiliate marketing strategy.
Grin.co unveiled a unique tool to simplify influencer marketing and ensure successful campaigns. Activations Benchmarking provides customized campaign suggestions, monitors important metrics, and analyzes progress, providing clear guidance for achieving objectives. This feature is backed by billions of data points gathered from over a decade of customer performance history.
Key Features:
- Discovery and recruitment
- Reporting and analytics
- Product seeding
- Content management
Pricing: Price varies depending on your business needs. Book a demo to acquire more detailed pricing info.
Key Features: Content Amplification, Search/Discovery, Influencer Lifecycle Management, Influencer Relationship Management, Content Review, Content Library, Campaign Management, Campaign Reporting, Influencer Analysis, Audience Analysis, E-commerce Tools, Product/Gifting Tools, Forms and Compliance,
Channels: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube
12. EverFlow
Best for: Large businesses
Notable clients: AdColony, Kettle & Fire, Sharecare
Location: Headquartered in Mountain View, California
Year founded: 2016
A company that began in 2016, Everflow has already tracked more than $1.9 billion in revenue in 2021 and $1.1 billion worth of payouts. Everflow enables merchants to manage more than one type of partnership, from influencers and offline placements to media buying. The platform also offers a tailored action plan (from prelaunch to hyperscale) for brands, agencies, and ad networks. It works not only with Google Ads and Facebook, but also with the software’s integrated shopping carts, which you can set up in an instant.
Not only does it allow you to manage multiple types of partnerships, but it also lets you find better partners. To do this, it includes EF Match, a solution created with the purpose of building long-term partnerships for Everflow users.
With this unique feature, Modanisa, an innovative fashion platform, generated six-figure sales in a matter of months. In fact, two affiliate partners alone drove more than $150,000 in new sales for the fashion brand.
Everflow regularly offers resources like webinars, white papers, and Fireside Chats to help clients learn and improve. Fireside Chats covers various topics, from using email marketing to drive affiliate program growth to mastering incrementality to measure program effectiveness.
Key Features:
- Performance and impression tracking and analytics
- Coupon code reward
- Variance reports
- Direct linking
- Instant cart setup
- 24/7 customer support
Pricing: Request a quote for detailed pricing information, but it generally starts at $750 a month.
Key Features: Content Amplification, Search/Discovery, Influencer Lifecycle Management, Influencer Relationship Management, Content Review, Content Library, Campaign Management, Campaign Reporting, Influencer Analysis, Audience Analysis, E-commerce Tools, Product/Gifting Tools, Forms and Compliance,
Channels: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube
13. Affiliatly
Best for: Small businesses
Notable clients: Heather Campins Jewelry, HempSapa
Location: Headquartered in Vratsa, Bulgaria
Year founded: 2014
If you’re on a budget, Affiliatly is an ideal option. Despite its low costs, it has a wide range of features that allow it to compete with other affiliate marketing software.
Affiliately offers a full range of features to meet all your needs and boost sales. It provides comprehensive settings, allowing you to control every aspect of your affiliate program from the admin panel. Plus, you can easily monitor accurate statistics of leads, traffic, sales, and performance from its dashboard.
Affiliatly officially integrates with over 10 platforms, including Shopify and WooCommerce. For your unsupported eCommerce sites, Affiliatly can provide JavaScript and PHP codes to help you integrate them into the platform. This referral management software can even help you inspect your site to check if it’s compatible with the platform.
Key Features:
- Shareable content
- Individual affiliate management
- Quick link generation
- Gift card rewards for affiliates
- Performance and activity tracking
- Custom integration for unsupported platforms
Pricing: Affiliatly’s starter pack is $16 a month with a 90-day free trial.
14. TUNE
Best for: Medium to large businesses as well as subscription services
Notable clients: Zillow, Groupon, BetterHelp
Location: Headquartered in Seattle, Washington State
Year founded: 2009
TUNE boasts a 98% customer satisfaction rate. That alone says a lot. TUNE launched the first software solution to measure mobile app campaign performances. The company has since expanded its services to support the needs of all types of performance partnerships, including ad networks, influencers, and publisher businesses.
TUNE works across desktop, mobile, and app, which helps you track your progress anywhere and anytime. The software’s performance-automated tools can even help you save time and increase your net profit. With the platform’s cookie-less server postback tracking, you can even get accurate and real-time data reports on your affiliate marketing campaign’s performance.
It’s especially a great choice if you’re selling subscription services and have a number of success stories in this niche. For example, when Preply was on the hunt for a solution that offered intuitive recruiting, customizable payouts, native fraud protection, and optimization tools, they decided on TUNE. It ticked all their boxes and increased their new user sign-ups by over 100% while cutting their customer acquisition cost in half.
Key Features:
- Real-time reporting
- Automated workflow and pay-out schemes
- Customizable payment rules
- Access across various digital platforms
- Customer support
Pricing: The plan for advertisers starts at $599 per month when paid annually, while the plan for networks starts at $899 per month when paid annually.
15. PartnerStack
Best for: SaaS businesses of all sizes
Notable clients: Vimeo, Freshworks, Looka
Location: Headquartered in Toronto, Canada
Year founded: 2015
PartnerStack is an award-winning, all-in-one partnerships platform. It has generated over $516 million in partner-driven revenue in the past year alone. It focuses on empowering affiliates, who can receive their own dashboards, as well as performance incentives.
Listing your program in its marketplace can make you accessible to thousands of affiliates. You can even customize an onboarding experience unique to each of your partners. Moreover, the platform automatically computes conversions, so you never have to miss a payment.
All in all, it’s a great tool for software companies and it has helped email marketing software solutions like Keap, Moosend, and Omnisend. In the case of Keap, it helped the company to earn as much as 45% of their revenue through partnerships. The fact that it supports multiple partnership channels played an integral part in this success story.
Key Features:
- Customized onboarding
- Automated and flexible payment scheme
- Incentives for top partners
- Conversion across every platform
- Software integration
Pricing:PartnerStack offers personalized plans and pricing to suit the needs of its clients. Book an appointment for pricing quotations.
16. impact.com
Best for: Brands, agencies, and publishers of all sizes
Notable clients: Canva, Lenovo, Coach, eBay, Adidas
Location: Santa Barbara, California
Year founded: 2008
Impact.com emerges as a frontrunner in the realm of affiliate marketing platforms, offering a robust suite of tools designed to automate and optimize the entire partnership lifecycle. This platform is a powerhouse for brands seeking to amplify their affiliate marketing strategies without inflating their operational burdens. With Impact.com, you can generate unique affiliate links, customize contracts, and precisely track performance.
The platform’s standout feature is its diverse affiliate marketplace, which allows for the creation of bespoke affiliate partnerships. This approach is pivotal for brands aiming to maximize their affiliate marketing ROI. Moreover, Impact.com’s suite includes protection and monitoring services, ensuring brand safety and compliance.
With Impact.com, you can expect exceptional results, as shown on their website through customer success stories, case studies, and testimonials. An example of one such successful partnership is with RevLifter, where they increased their QoQ conversion rates by 27.3%.
Key Features:
- Customizable contracts and payment models
- Advanced performance reporting
- Managed services for influencer marketing
Pricing: The Starter pack costs $30 per month or 3% of the monthly revenue, whichever is greater. The Essential pack is $500 per month, while the Pro pack is $2,500 per month.
Key Features: Influencer Content Amplification, Search/Discovery, Automated Recruiting, Influencer Relationship Management, Influencer Marketplace, Team Collaboration Tools, Content Review, Content Library, Campaign Management, Campaign Reporting, Influencer Analysis, E-commerce Tools, Product/Gifting Tools, Forms and Compliance, Payment Processing,
17. iDevAffiliate
Best for: Merchants of all sizes
Notable clients: Exotic Golf Putters, Ubiquity Hosting Solutions, Skin Pro International
Location: Headquartered in Southern California
Year founded: 1999
iDevAffiliate has 20+ years of experience under its belt. Its ease of use and rich array of features make it popular among merchants, who are the platform’s focus. iDevAffiliate’s features cater to different users, from beginners to experts. Their built-in onboarding even comes with over 40 hours of video tutorials.
iDevAffiliates allows partners to use their own subdomain for their account location and inbound links. This eliminates any suspicious links, building more trust among affiliates and audiences. You can even share your links on social media, as well as build stronger SEO through backlinking. On the other hand, coupon codes don’t require links, which is great for offline marketing.
With more than 180 integrated apps and tools, iDevAffiliates covers a wide range of tools from shopping carts to WordPress plugins, landing pages, payment processors, coupon code commissioning, web host billing, and email tracking.
Key Features:
- Social media sharing and SEO linking
- General lead and coupon code tracking
- Step-by-step onboarding
- Multi-tier recruitment
- Unique subdomain
- More than 175 integrations
- Performance rewards
- Fraud prevention and security
Pricing: For a limited-time offer, the entry price is $39 a month.
18. FlexOffers
Best for: Advertisers and publishers
Notable clients: The Motley Fool, Snapfish, Nike, Samsung
Location: Headquartered in Miami, Florida
Year founded: 2008
An award-winning performance-based platform, FlexOffers has more than 12,000 affiliate programs. The software assigns each domain to an account manager proficient in affiliate marketing. Moreover, the platform’s support team is readily accessible through phone or email, plus a ticket system after office hours.
FlexOffer’s advertiser interface is one of its biggest highlights. It not only allows you to see performance reports in real-time but also makes your promotions accessible to publishers. Moreover, you’ll be able to see which potential customers have visited your website along with the total conversions that your campaign has generated.
Key Features:
- Advanced payment options
- Cookie-less tracking
- Real-time traffic reporting
- 24/7 compliance monitoring
Pricing: FlexOffers provides pricing upon request.
19. ShareASale
Best for: Advertisers and publishers
Notable clients: Etsy, BuzzFeed, LTK
Location: Headquartered in Chicago, USA
Year founded: 2000
After more than twenty years in the business, ShareASale has over 25,000 merchants and 270,000 active publishers worldwide, making it one of the best ways to find affiliates for your marketing campaigns.
The platform seeks to nurture relationships between clients and partners. In 2022 alone, it has generated $200 million in sales.
With ShareASales’s user-friendly interface, communication would be easier for you and your affiliates. You’ll have as much control over your program’s setup, including the time frame of your report and information to track. The platform’s automated marketing emails can help save you time, while affiliate rewards and customizable commissions can motivate your affiliates.
For example, when Masque Bar wanted to grow its marketing efforts with an affiliate marketing platform, it set up an account on ShareASale. Using this platform and a digital marketing agency, it boosted sales by 35% and traffic by double that.
Key Features:
- Real-time performance insights
- Customizable reports
- Custom commissions
- Cookie-less tracking
Pricing: The one-time network sign-up fee for merchants is $625 plus a $125 minimum deposit into their accounts. Merchants are also charged recurring fees, such as 20% of the commission paid to the affiliate and a $35 monthly fee for network access.
20. CJ Affiliate
Best for: Advertisers and publishers
Notable clients: Lacoste, Dell India, Olympia Sports
Location: Headquartered in Santa Barbara, California
Year founded: 1998
Over 3,800 brands around the world trust CJ Affiliate, an affiliate marketing platform that has been making a mark since 1998. It’s also worth noting that the platform has close to 170,000 affiliates, making them a viable partnership ecosystem.
With CJ Affiliate, you can be confident that you’re compliant with privacy regulations. Its sophisticated tech promises network quality that detects and eliminates fraud. The platform also reviews affiliates before their first payment, plus you can get specialized protection in facilitating your program policies.
Not only can you entrust affiliate screening to them, but you can also leave campaign management in their hands. Their team of specialists can craft and execute influencer strategies and take care of everything from recruitment to negotiation to tracking.
It’s this level of day-to-day management that has impressed the marketing team of Dell. Since they’ve switched to CJ towards the end of 2020, they’ve enjoyed significant growth. In the first six months of launching their affiliate marketing program, they already generated double-digit growth.
Key Features:
- Omnichannel integrations
- Real-time insights and analytics
- Intuitive platform
- Custom commissions
- Flexible compensations
- Easy integration to eCommerce platforms
Pricing: Book an appointment to request a pricing quotation.
21. Referral Rock
Best for: Agencies
Notable clients: Active Campaign, TripAdvisor, Random House
Location: Headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia
Year founded: 2017
You might be familiar with Referral Rock as one of the top referral program software solutions available that can help you to take advantage of word-of-mouth advertising. In addition, it also offers partner and affiliate marketing software to help ensure your best affiliates stay engaged.
It offers more than 50 integrations, including integrations with the main eCommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. With it, you can promote your affiliate marketing program through various marketing channels, such as embedding it in your site.
One of its most attractive features is that it offers highly configurable reward options. From time-based offers to recurring rewards, there are many types of incentives that you can create that will draw attention.
It’s the number of out-of-the-box integrations that helped an eCommerce store like Grover to create an automated referral program quickly. Not only could they get everything set up quickly, but it didn’t take too long before they saw results. After the first couple of months, over 5,000 customers had already registered for their referral program. What’s more, more than half of these sign-ups converted to new sales.
Key Features:
- Multiple incentive structures
- Referral attribution and activity tracking
- Automatic payouts
- Advanced reward rules
- Triggered emails
- Social media sharing
- Downloadable reports and activity tracking
- Team accounts
Pricing: Plans start at $175 per month.
22. Omnistar Affiliate
Best for: Small, medium, and large businesses
Notable clients: Cisco, Trek, Picktochart
Location: Headquartered in Orlando, Florida
Year founded: 1999
Omnistar Affiliate is one of the most highly rated and reviewed affiliate software solutions. It’s used by over 16,000 businesses from various industries that include real estate, healthcare, and eCommerce. If you’re going to be using it to help with your eCommerce store, you’ll be happy to know that it integrates with thousands of apps, including Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Squarespace.
While on the topic of integrations, Omnistar Affiliate also includes full integration with LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. This means that your affiliates will have no issue sharing their link across these leading social networks for more exposure.
Similarly to Refersion, it also has its own exclusive directory where you can find affiliates. This can come in handy if you’re searching for people who are more knowledgeable about affiliate marketing than your pool of customers.
Alternatively, it can help you to identify your most loyal customers by means of a single-question survey. This way, customers who rated their experience with your store as very positive can automatically be included into your program. This auto signup feature can be a real timesaver. Plus, it simply makes it much easier if you want to scale your program as quickly as possible.
Then, to keep your affiliates engaged and motivated, you can share email templates and upload banners or other creative digital assets that they can use to forward to their network. Not only does this help you keep the branding more consistent, but it also makes it much easier for affiliates to promote your products. After all, if it’s too much work for your affiliates to promote your products your affiliate program won’t take off.
Key Features:
- Social media sharing
- Exclusive influencer directory
- User-friendly setup wizard
- Multi-level marketing
- Promo code tracking
- Various rewards available that include commissions, coupons, gift cards, and discounts
Pricing: After its free 15-day trial, pricing starts at $47 per month.
23. Reditus
Best for: B2B SaaS brands
Notable clients: Expandi, Prospectss
Location: Headquartered in Utrecht, the Netherlands
Year founded: 2021
If you’re thinking about growing your SaaS business with affiliate marketing, you can check out Reditus. Headquartered in the Netherlands, it describes itself as a partner management tool for SaaS companies. Their goal is to be a customer-centric business that can help SaaS companies (or affiliates) to grow a new recurring revenue stream.
According to their website, in as little as 30 minutes you can set up a partner and referral program. To help you continue saving time after your program is up and running, it lets you manage partners and get full control of them via a single platform. Not only does Reditus help you with partner management, but they also offer a marketplace where you can find new partners.
Expandi, one of the leading LinkedIn automation tools, found this marketplace especially useful. They added themselves to it to acquire new affiliates outside of their own network and ultimately evaluate the growth potential of using such an affiliate network. In just six months, the Reditus marketplace showed that it can be a valuable addition. They gained over 70 affiliates and generated more than $26,000 in total revenue. Based on these results, they decided to move their existing program to Reditus.
Key Features:
- A marketplace
- Analytics
- Team training
- A partner agreement template
- SEO-friendly links
Pricing: Pricing is determined by the monthly recurring revenue from affiliates. Brands generating up to $500 in monthly recurring revenue qualify for a free plan. Beyond that, pricing begins at $47 per month, billed annually.
24. Cake
Best for: Advertisers and publishers
Notable clients: Forex Club, Purify Digital, DMi Partners
Location: Headquartered in Laguna Beach, California
Year founded: 2010
Cake is a performance marketing software that includes solutions for affiliate marketing. When using it for affiliate marketing, you can use it to measure, manage, and optimize partner campaigns.
It offers a number of features, like smart real-time insights into the performance of your partners and campaigns and pixel whitelisting, to help you optimize your affiliate marketing program, while reducing risk to ensure it remains credible. Then, to ensure that all the affiliates stay up to date, it offers customized email templates for enhanced email communication.
It’s Cake’s ability to simplify management of affiliate marketing campaigns that has impressed names like DMi Partners. Considering that DMi Partners is rated as one of the top email marketing agencies, it says a lot that they listed Cake’s campaign management and customer support as two of its top features.
Key Features:
- Real-time reporting
- Roles access controls
- Voucher code support
Pricing: Pricing starts at $299. A free trial is available.
25. Offer18
Best for: Advertisers and agencies
Notable clients: Yellow Digital Media, Digifish3
Location: Headquartered in Zirakpur, India
Year founded: 2016
Trusted by nearly 1,000 companies, Offer18 is an award-winning tracking solution that was founded in 2016. Aimed at digital professionals, it can help them to create their own affiliate network and improve their ROI with the help of sophisticated built-in tools.
It offers all the key tools that you need to create, start, and manage affiliates. One feature that deserves special mention, though, is its flexible payouts. You can, for example, use it to pay affiliates according to their geographical conversions or use certain events or goals to set up payouts. And, to prevent that you end up paying more than needed, it includes a number of fraud prevention tools that include a traffic source validator.
Offer18’s customer stories feature a number of marketing agencies that have chosen to migrate their services. For example, Digifish3 migrated to Offer18 because of the accurate targeting options, intuitive API integration, and fast configuration. The round-the-clock support was also a deal-breaker — a benefit they didn’t have with their previous platform.
Key Features:
- 24/7 support
- Fraud prevention
- Payout tiers
- A customizable affiliate dashboard
- An affiliate link checker
- Email communication
Pricing: After a free 10-day trial, pricing starts at $49 per month.
What to Look For in an Affiliate Marketing Software Platform?
Here's a simple checklist of factors to consider when selecting software to optimize your affiliate marketing endeavors.
Easy Set Up
Choose affiliate marketing software that you can set up without needing an IT consultation. Simplicity is the key for many businesses, particularly small ones and entrepreneurs new to affiliate marketing. AuthorityHacker’s review on ShareASale highlighted its easy setup:
Merchants simply need to provide basic publishing and login information to enter the Wizard Setup. The entire process takes less than 15 minutes.
ShareASale typically approves accounts within a day, excluding weekends and holidays. Niall Roche, from AuthorityHacker, applied for an affiliate account and got approved within 24 hours. He mentioned that this was a big improvement compared to other networks he tested, where the process was so complicated that he simply gave up.
User-friendly Interface
An intuitive interface should accommodate not only you but other types of affiliates, too. You want a dashboard that gives an overview of your campaigns and their progress. On the other hand, affiliates should be able to view their earnings and easily access shareable content. Additional points if the platform can enable all parties to customize their dashboard to match their brand.
An intuitive dashboard declutters data presentations. The simplicity isn’t just pleasing to the eyes but also functional and informative, which helps with quicker comprehension and better decision-making. A great example of an intuitive affiliate dashboard is from WeCanTrack. Its data aggregator affiliate dashboard automatically collects and presents your affiliate network account and website data in a sophisticated manner.
You can view data from various levels, such as advertisers, websites, traffic sources, landing pages, status, and campaigns. You can also choose your preferred currency and time zone, and the dashboard will convert all transactions and dates accordingly. The advantage of this advanced dashboard is its easy adjustability and customization options.
Take a look at WeCanTrack’s performance graphs:
SaaS integration
Integrating with eCommerce platforms like PayPal and Shopify is an important feature of affiliate marketing platforms. Find one that instantly sets up applications that you use. It’s ideal to have as many integrations as possible, though some platforms also allow users to create custom integrations.
The more integrations it offers, the better transparency you can expect. If it integrates with the tools currently in your MarTech stack, you’ll get a much more comprehensive picture, allowing you to make better-informed decisions.
Check early on whether it is compatible with leading eCommerce platforms like Amazon, Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. This is particularly beneficial for sellers. When your business tools are integrated, they provide transparency so you can see and understand how much revenue your affiliates are bringing in.
For example, AffiliateWP smoothly integrates with popular eCommerce, membership, form, and invoice plugins for WordPress. You can also request new integrations.
AffiliateWP integrations
With these integrations, nearly all data processes are automated, saving businesses resources that would've been spent on hiring specialized staff. Automation ensures data accuracy and consistency, reducing costs linked to errors, rework, and inefficiencies.
Resources and Customer Support
Explore the platform’s website and check if it provides helpful resources like video tutorials and guides. Make sure the resources are recent, underlining the company’s dedication to providing help regularly.
PartnerStack is a tool that shines in this category. Its ecosystem of resources includes Research Lab, which provides data-driven reports and trends, and Partner Playbook, which explores partnership plays.
PartnerStack resources
Another great tool is Post Affiliate Pro, which offers a “tour” to give a general overview of the platform. The tour is a dedicated page that tackles affiliate programs and networks, explains the different roles in affiliate marketing, highlights the services Post Affiliate Pro provides, and provides easy access to key resources like pricing and scheduling an appointment with its team members.
Post Affiliate Pro resources
Post Affiliate Pro resources are extensive as well. Not only does it provide blogs and videos, but it also features an Academy where you can learn to become an affiliate marketing expert. It also provides an affiliate marketing glossary, affiliate marketing directory, and support portal for guides and how-to articles.
Customer assistance should always be available across platforms for you and your affiliates. Consider customer support uptime, as well as customer ratings. Outside office hours, the ideal platform has a ticket system for emergency cases.
Test customer support assistance by sending an email to see if they respond promptly. Initiate a chat to see if a live person or a bot will answer. This will give you an idea of how fast and thoroughly they communicate.
See how many ways you can contact Post Affiliate Pro:
Post Affiliate Pro
Reports and Tracking
You want affiliate marketing software that tracks clicks and sales in real-time. This would allow you to see which of your campaigns are doing well and which ones need improvement. Moreover, software that gives you and your affiliates detailed overview reports would help you plan future campaigns more efficiently.
Ideally, your tools should also make it easy for you to spot who your best affiliates are. In addition to measuring key metrics like sales and clicks, also try to find a tool that displays the purchase conversion rate of an affiliate’s traffic.
A good example is the Referral Factory. It includes built-in referral tracking so you can quickly access your program’s data. You can export data via CSV, access it through API, or integrate with various CRM platforms like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zapier.
Referral Factory also provides referral tracking for users through customizable tracking pages. You send them a tracking link to input their email address. From there, they’ll have access to their referral stats, pending rewards, issued rewards, and conversion rates.
Here’s a Referral Factory review from GetApp:
Price
While features should still be your focus in finding an affiliate marketing platform, price should also play a role. Some software is great for smaller companies with a tight budget, while others can benefit from more complex programs with their advanced features.
You can do price comparisons by checking each software or utilizing resources like Influencer Marketing Hub. IMH provides in-depth reviews about affiliate marketing software and conveniently places the pricing on top:
Influencer Marketing Hub: Upfluence review
Browsing these resources can provide you with an idea of the pricing of affiliate software. Once you’ve shortlisted your choices, ask the companies for detailed pricing information so you don’t go beyond your budget.
While on the topic of money, also look for a platform that offers some degree of fraud protection. At the end of the day, you want to ensure your money is being applied wisely and fraud detection will give you more peace of mind that your marketing budget isn’t wasted on fake orders or spam traffic.
What Is an Affiliate Marketing Platform?
An affiliate marketing platform is a vendor that facilitates all bases of affiliate program management. This can include:
- Onboarding
- Tracking
- Reporting sales and clicks
- Managing referrals
- Optimizing site traffic
- Paying commissions
Now, finding the perfect platform for your brand is half the battle. Here are some features that you should prioritize.
Why Should You Use Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing can be an effective, low-risk and low-cost marketing strategy for smaller online stores with limited marketing budgets. In short, the beauty of affiliate marketing is that it can help you to reach more potential customers faster without necessarily increasing your marketing spend. The only things you basically need to concentrate on are to create content, spread the word about your program, and manage your affiliates.
As virtually everything can be tracked, it also makes it easier to measure the ROI.
Depending on the software that you use, you can also concentrate on selling specific high-ticket items. This way, you can ask your affiliates to promote only a select few products in return for a higher commission. Alternatively, if there are certain items that have a low turnover rate, you can instead ask your network of affiliates to concentrate on these to help you get rid of excess stock.
Wrapping Things Up
By investing in any one of these tools, it becomes much easier to manage your affiliate program and affiliates. This will leave you with more time to focus on finding the right affiliates and creating captivating content.
That being said, take your time to research the different tools available. While we featured only 25 software solutions, there are many more that you can choose from. At the end of the day, the right tool should be able to create links and banner ads and take care of the admin tasks, at the very least.
All of the tools that we discussed offer either some form of free trial or demo. Take advantage of this before you make any financial commitments. Also, be sure to pay attention to online reputation. There are a number of review websites that you can check out before making your final decision.
And, if you’re not convinced about trying out affiliate marketing yet, consider this — more than 80% of brands are already using affiliate programs. What’s more, almost 40% of marketers agree that it’s one of the top marketing strategies for attracting new customers. As you only pay for actual results, there’s not a lot that you can lose by giving it a try at least.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which platform is best for affiliate marketing?
There are several top-rated affiliate marketing platforms. These include:
- Refersion
- iDevAffiliate
- LeadDyno
- Referral Rock
- Omnistar Affiliate
- Tapfiliate
- Post Affiliate Pro
- ReferralCandy
- Affiliatly
- Everflow.io
Are there any good free affiliate marketing software?
Yes, you can check out:
- UpPromote
- Trackdesk
- Reditus
Which is the best place to learn more about affiliate marketing?
There are several great affiliate marketing courses that you can sign up for. This means that from the comfort of your home, you can sharpen your skills. You can, for example, try:
- The Authority Site System by Authority Hacker
- The Affiliate Lab by Matt Diggity
- Affiliate Academy by Voluum
- Savage Affiliate by Franklin Hatchett
- Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing by Michelle Schroeder-Gardner
Can I do affiliate marketing on WhatsApp?
Yes, you can do affiliate marketing on WhatsApp. When you work in affiliate marketing, you will get commission depending on what product you sell. Once you choose the product to promote, you can start promoting on WhatsApp using your affiliate URL. You can share the link with your contacts and connected groups on WhatsApp.
What are the top tips and best practices for affiliate marketing?
To help you get started with or improve your affiliate marketing strategy, consider the following top advice:
- Grow your understanding of your target audience
- Disclose affiliate links
- Implement a multi-channel strategy
- Use KPIs to monitor your progress
- Repurpose/edit old content
- Write product comparisons
